Alex Lancia

A bit of context … I teach grade 2 and as of the time of this writing (April 3, 2020) Seesaw Activities only allows one link to be uploaded per Activity.

The problem was that I wanted to use Seesaw Activities as a “one stop shop” for delivering lessons virtually and then using the Activities feature in Seesaw for the formative/student do portion – especially given the extended nature of the online learning encouraging us to rethink how to deliver new content.

Disclaimer, this is the end of Week 1 but seems to be working so far.  I will update this post at a later date with “lessons learned.”  However in the spirit of collaboration in I will detail below what I do.  Also, shout out to @KSzajner for introducing me to this concept on Twitter.

Step 1: Use Google Slides to “virtual teach”

• I used slide animations to liven up my delivery a bit.  Click here if you need some help with that.
• My goals are to keep concepts simple and bite size with video lessons under 5 minutes.

Step 2: Screencast the Seesaw Instructions

• To record my screen I used Screencastify which I find user friendly in terms of exporting directly to Youtube once finished.  Use this link for more info on Screencastify.

Step 3: Generate the Master Slide

• Publish to web to get the single active link.
• When writing the Activity instructions I used this framework:
  • What: explaining the activity in brief.
  • How: the steps the students will need to take.
  • Why: the purpose/rationale behind the activity (I link this to “I can” statements).

Will update this post with some reflections and lessons learned as I continue down this virtual learning journey.  In the meantime any feedback and ways to improve always welcome.  This is me on Seesaw (though many of my recent Activities I am doing now are not there for class privacy lessons).